Monday, August 2, 2010

Playing Barbies and Teachable Moments.

Jenna and I were playing with Barbies the other day. I am always looking for the plot, the storyline, the conflict and Jenna usually just wants to have them go on dates and change clothes alot. Jenna was playing the part of Caitlyn, or Taitlyn, as she calls her, and I was Lisa. I was getting married to the Troy Bolton doll from High School Musical and Taitlyn was a bridesmaid. After the wedding was an afterparty, which was pretty low-key, and mostly was Taitlyn and Lisa sitting down on the floor in new dresses, chatting.
We were playing for awhile when Jenna says, as Taitlyn, "Would you like to see my unitorn?"
I immediately recognize that she means unicorn- we have one from the Barbie Pegasus movie- and try to make this a Teachable Moment, like they taught me at her speech eval.
Turns out Jenna can say a garbled, horrible "kch" sound when prompted, but it has yet to make its way into her everyday speech. It sounds like she's clearing her throat of tons of phlegm or has learned to speak Hebrew and is saying a hard /ch/.
So I say to her, all gentle like, "Hey Jenna, instead of 'uni-torn' can you say uni-kkkccchhh-orn?"
She practices her /kch/ sound a bit and then calmly asks me: "Would you like to see my kkkkccchhh- unitorn?"

And I just laughed and said, "Sure!"

Teachable Moment, indeed.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just LOVE that story-it is SO Jenna! Besides the speech thing, I love that she only wants to do the fashion end of Barbies-no real plot. She is a fashionista! AND she can swim from side to side in the pool UNDERWATER and beat Pop Pop! Love, Mom

Anonymous said...

It WAS a teachable moment.....YOU learned that Jenna will be her own unique little person with her own unique little dialect! (Which I think you'll miss when she starts talking like everyone else!) Love, LW